Grilled seafood in the car park

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The other week I had visitors in town and I needed to find some place to take them out for dinner. They've been to Taiwan many times before so the popular hot pots will be a bit boring for them. We have a lot of good Japanese restaurants in Taiwan, but they've just been to Japan for holiday, so no point having more Japanese. Suggstion, suggestion, suggestions. Then I remember I saw a TV program recently where they reviewed a seafood shack in town. And I really do mean a shack!

They don't have proper shop or anything but I did find the address from internet. When the taxi driver arrived on the street, there wasn't anything nearby, any shops there were, were all closed. He stopped by a car park entrance, to check the address again, so we said we'd just get off here and walk around to find it. Just as we were wondering which direction to go, hubby looked inside the car park and recognised the shack from the TV program!

Let me introduce you to Pretend to be busy tribe kids, not kidding you, that's their name!! It's a grill seafood place opened by two young guys. And it turns out, it was their first anniversary the day before we visited. The kitchen is in the container on the right, and the seating area is the shack on the left.

So what's so special about this place? Well, first, the location. Who's had dinner in a car park before? Second, from the TV program, they do awesome grilled seafood. And third, they don't have a menu. Tell them how much you want to spend per person, and they'll do the dishes accordingly. We opted for NTD700 which is just over USD22.

I loved this sign outside the kitchen, and couldn't resist peeping inside. It looked pretty well kit out for a shack. Just hope the food is equally good.

There aren't that many tables, though being in the car park which wasn't that busy at night time, they could add as many tables as they want. The only downside is that you'd be out in the open if it rained, unlike us where we were under cover. Typical of Taiwanese places, drinks are self service from the fridge, they just count the bottles on the table when you pay your bill.

Once we were settled down, one of the guys asked us if we have any preference over seafood vs meat proportions in the dishese. Since we had no idea what we were going to eat, we left it entirely up to the guys. No point in being too picky when you're having a menuless dinner. The food started to flow very soon.

First up was the seafood risotto or paella I wish I'd taken better photos of the dishes, but I was pretty hungry and quickly snapped a couple of shots before I dived in. You can't see it very well as the bowl in black as are the mussels on the top. The mussels are lined up on the right, and there are more on the left. To be honest, I'm not sure if I should call this a risotto or a paella because other than one being Italian and the other being Spanish, they're very similar to me. Anyway, this one was rich with seafood flavour, and quite creamy.

We ended up with 3 meat dish, all grilled to perfection. Here's steak, chicken and duck breast. The duck breast came with a fruit sauce on top which complemented it very well. At that time, we figured out what it was made of, but I've forgotten now. I can just remember pineapple was one of the ingredients.

Apart from the seafood paella/risotto, we were served a prawn pasta. The thing I don't like about having pasta here in Taiwan, is that they tend to be very watery. That's why I avoid it when I go out. You can see this one is quite watery, but once we unravel the spaghetti, it soaked up the liquid, so it wasn't that bad. Actually this is one of the best pasta dishes I've had in Taiwan,.

Now for the rest of the seafood dishes. A big bowl of mussels and were very fresh and juicy. And the grilled prawns they were divine! My favourite.

And the finale, fresh oysters grilled in front of you by this cute dude. My only complaint (not to the cute dude) is why they serve 12 oysters to the 5 of us? By this time, they were starting to get busy and all the other tables were filled up. Cute dude was running backwards and forwards serving the other customers, but luckily didn't forget about us and the oysters.

We were full after the oysters, and cute dude didn't return to our table again. Just as we were about to ask for a bill, he re appeared with the final course. Mushrooms? I hear you ask? That's what we though as well until we turned them over and they're actually sweet buns with custard filling! How cute was that!!!

You may have noticed a lot of the dishes look very similar, black plates with a bunch of spring onions and red pepper for garnish. It seems like this is their signature presentation, but luckily it wasn't looks over substance. They guys know how to do good seafood. And on top of that, food taste so much better out in open space. Especially when its in a carpark, it's just an ambience you can't get elsewhere. Weird I know, but that's all part of the fun and experience.